5.14.2011

In 1959 Marcel Breuer created a spectacularly long, low house of Maryland fieldstone in a wooded sanctuary outside of Baltimore. Known as Hooper House II, it features the "binuclear" concept of a central courtyard that separates public areas (living, dining, kitchen) from private spaces (six bedrooms and a family room). Hooper II is stringent Bauhaus; a masterful demarcation of taut planes and open plans using local, natural materials.

5.12.2011

Roaming across the walls of two vast underground chambers for thousands of years are over 400 beautifully hand-rendered animals, carbon dated to the Paleolithic Ice Age. They are the earliest art ever discovered, yet they cannot be called primitive. Such exquisite refinement, such economy of line. It's all there - the character, the behavior, the movement, in perfectly fresh and pristine condition after an unimaginable 30,000 to 32,000 years. These were interior decorators who knew their stuff. Experience their work through Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

5.10.2011

For millions of years, mighty volcanoes erupted and spewed their contents across the land that would become the cradle of civilization. East of Istanbul, beyond Ankara, lies the moonscaped land of Cappadocia. Centuries of winds and floods eroded the sandstone and volcanic tufa into whimsical shapes which the native people carved into shelters. Many of these troglodyte dwellings are still inhabited and some have been turned into hotels. One of the most fanciful of these is Yunak Evlieri. Whittled right into a mountain, accessible only by narrow winding passageways and steps, this hotel includes a 19th century Greek mansion, six cave houses, and 30 chambers dating all the way back to the 5th and 6th centuries. Astonishing.

5.07.2011

Except for a giant window thrust into one side, this man-made intervention, a 270-square-foot one-room dwelling, could be just another one of the mossy weathered boulders dotting Costa da Morte. Instead, the guesthouse blurs boundaries between architecture and landscape. "It's a piece of nature built with our own hands," architect and engineer García-Abril says. "A space within a stone that blends with the surroundings. A contemplative space, a little poem."